So this <a href="http://triangularpixels.net/games/rescuesquad/">originally started</a> as a one-week game programming competition entry which turned out better than I expected. I've been working , extending and generally tinkering with it for the last couple of years off-and-on, and it's about ready for some external feedback.

Building on the same core gameplay, Rescue Squad 2 will be considerably extended with new maps, new helicopters, new gadgets and completely overhauled graphics.

Currently I'm working on the tutorial levels, so there's only a single challenge map with a single helicopter that's playable at the moment. Controls are cursor keys and space to change height or land.

Global online high scores should be working, so let's see who can claim the top spot!

General gameplay and technical feedback is welcome and would be very helpful. Should work on Windows, Mac and Linux - let me know if anything goes wrong (preferably with the contents of the log in USER_HOME/.Rescue Squad 2/RescueSquadLog.txt

just played it, and I'm very impressed with it. I've never played your games before, but I imagine you built a framework, and it does look nice ! You have you own style, that's cool.

Well about the game... as I said before, it really looks good, the thick borders give it a "cartoon style" which I personally like very much .At the beginning I tought the control was a bit awkward, but then I got used to it and in my second try I got the 1st place in the high score,yay ( until now !) .

Talking about the high score, maybe you already know this, but when I beat the 1st place, I went to the challenge 1 and it was showing "top score - apple"(or something like that). That is, it was not showing my score - it was not updated . But when I looked at the ranking, my highscore was there . When I restarted the game, my name appeared there tough.

Besides than that, good work . I've always enjoyed the Urban/Desert/Jungle Strike series and your game brought me good memories of it . cheers !

This is one of the best looking indie Java game I've seen, a prime example of what an expert can be achieve with Java, and totally flushes down the myth that Java games can't look as nice as Flash. Great job!!

I've played some, and the gameplay is very nice. The helicopter is tricky to control, but that's how it should be.

Ideas:- Perhaps there should be some wind hitting the helicopter, and the player should see some indication of wind direction.

BTW - do you have any specific objection to using "<extension name="lwjgl" href="http://lwjgl.org/jnlp/extension.php"/>" in your JNLP? Maybe you want it to keep using the version of LWJGL you developed in?

Thanks for the comments guys. I should have added high scores to my games earlier, it's much more fun watching other people's scores roll in.

teletubo: I've not seen that happen with the scores before, it could be that I've got something cached when it shouldn't be. I'll look into it.

appel: Challenge 1 does actually have some light wind (wind direction and strength is shown by the little sweeping white lines). When I get the tutorial levels done wind and other weather effects will be explained and it'll be clearer I hope.

irreversible_kev: Yeah I bundle a specific version of LWJGL because of how I've got my projects set up. Upgrading is a bit of a pain, but I'm on quite an old version so I really should upgrade.

heya, great job. Here are some comments I hope you find useful. Please feel free to disregard anything I say.

--wonderful art, I love the water animations.--good sfx--love the special effects of the lighting--a little hard to control but overall physics are good. getting it over a guy is a little hard.

--Instructions would be nice. Never figured out how to drop someone off once I got them. I'm sure it is simple but hit every key a-z, enter and space but couldn't figure out where or how.--Music...this is purely a taste thing, not my taste but I just turned it off.--I wanted the copter to look more copter like, keep it cute but more than just two circles.--There was a guy to the north east who I spent about 2 minutes on him. I guess he doesn't need rescue. Not sure why here is there.--Hard to tell the height thing. Not sure how it was helping. I ran into a few things. Dunno if a shadow or something might help see position and perhaps have it influence game play more. I was thinking like a river dodging rocks or something.--Again because I didn't drop off the guys I wasn't sure what the hook was. Is it a speed thing...is it a level thing... I'll play again when I know how to drop off.

Whee! New version up! I've added a 5 level tutorial which should explain the basics and generally help people get to grips with it. I suspect the final tutorial will be about twice as long since there's still plenty of gameplay mechanics left to explain.

Darrin: Points noted, thanks. If you get time please try the tutorial and see if that helps things.

Some rather respectable scores posted too, with Json leading the pack. I should probably added paged high scores so people can see more than just the top ten I think.

Lots of fun - I think your tutorial goes in the wrong order, though. Basically you start with a mission where I am supposed to rescue someone but I have no idea of the controls, then you go into a mission to teach me the controls.

Still it's probably good that I was able to figure out how to rescue the guy without too much trouble. The helicopter flying is a bit weird, and it took me a moment to figure out how to change the elevation (and that I needed to), but otherwise it's very straightforward.

I'm still somewhat confused to why you need the night vision and flares because you can see just fine without them. Maybe it needs to be even darker when you are out there

Heh, I was wondering if anyone would find those buttons. They're not used in the current levels - later you'll have to do things like find specific objects with the night vision and mark them with flares. I may take the ambient light down a little at night time to make it harder to see without your search light though.

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I was also thinking about weather effects, that would be rather cool in higher levels. Makes the flying somewhat more difficult.

Yeah, I've got wind, rain and fog all coded up and all affect your visibility and handling differently. Again the code is sitting idle until I make some proper levels with them switched on.

Shoot. Would you mind posting the contents of the log? It'll be in your user home dir (USER_HOME/.Rescue Squad 2/RescueSquadLog.txt - I'm afraid I don't know how to view hidden files on mac, you might have to use the terminal).

Shoot. Would you mind posting the contents of the log? It'll be in your user home dir (USER_HOME/.Rescue Squad 2/RescueSquadLog.txt - I'm afraid I don't know how to view hidden files on mac, you might have to use the terminal).

That's... very odd. It claims to support multitexturing, but only one texture at a time (which is an interesting interpretation of multitexturing). And the gl version is only 1.2, which is ancient. I would suggest checking to see if there's some more up to date drivers for your card, since that looks very suspicious.

ah cool. I played the tutorial. Starting to get the hang of it now. A few suggestions on the tutorial.

--First one just have it complete when they go through the rings. No need to go round and round. People like quick progress.--have the next one drop a line/land. so the whole practice is pick up and drop once. --If you can have the shadow of the copter over the buildings not under.--I might have missed it but on the loop one, did you say something like "hint: land to refuel"--are you doing a pixel perfect hit box? just curious seems wider on the people yet perfect on the cargo.

That's... very odd. It claims to support multitexturing, but only one texture at a time (which is an interesting interpretation of multitexturing). And the gl version is only 1.2, which is ancient. I would suggest checking to see if there's some more up to date drivers for your card, since that looks very suspicious.

Eh... I'm actually sure that I have the latest drivers, since Macs have all driver updates automatically through software update (since Apple controls the hardware). The card is shit though

It's mostly a mistake on my part - the card is recent and supports plenty of modern extensions, but only supports core 1.2. Which means that trying to do multitexturing through the core functions (which are 1.3) returns funny results. I've switched the code to use everything as extesions now so it should work fine. 'tis an unusual approach from intel, but still technically valid and I guess it allows them to focus only on the newfangled stuff that they want to, rather than wasting time on the 1.3/1.4/1.5 fluff that no-one uses.

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